


Little Blue Riding Beau

by velveteencardium



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Eventual Romance, F/F, Fairy tale retelling, Gratuitous Language because Beau has no filter, Little Red Riding Hood retelling, first person POV, lycanthropy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 14:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18317522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velveteencardium/pseuds/velveteencardium
Summary: A  restless young monk is made courier for the Cobalt Soul reserve. She chafes against the duties thrust upon her, but little does she know that, as she wanders, something else stirs just beyond the edge of the path.





	Little Blue Riding Beau

_The Woods are lovely, dark and deep,_  
_But I have promises to keep,_  
_And miles to go before I sleep,_  
_And miles to go before I sleep._

* * *

 

I hate dropping stuff off for the old lady types. They’re either super fussy, super slow, or they smell like mothballs and farts. This old bird is a triple threat.

“What’s this all about then?” she mutters, pulling thick, splotchy specs up over her thick, splotchy nose.

“It’s an insurance policy, ma’am.” I force a smile so hard I can feel my jaw breaking. “They want me to hand it over to my supervisor when I get back.”

“Whatever do they need this for?”

“It’s to ensure that you received your herbs (medicinal) and your (1) copy of Flieg’s Famous Herbal Remedies without them being damaged or tampered with, ma’am.”

Her eyes widen. “Oh my!”

“Right, ha ha!? It’s like they don’t trust me! Now, could you please sign the form?” My patience is starting to crack.

“I’m just not sure I see why it’s necessary. And besides, I’m uncomfortable giving out my signature to a stranger.”

I grit my teeth. “I get where you’re coming from, ma’am, but they don’t hold on to the form. I hand it in, they look it over, and then they chuck it in the fire.”

“Why, that’s terribly wasteful! Back in my day, ink and paper—“

Oh God, Oh God. I need Tracy. What would Tracy do? ... Okay,Tracy would twirl her hair around a finger and kiss ass until they did what she wanted. My voice shoots up three octaves and I start to giggle for no reason.

“Wow! That is a really good point! I’ll bring up your concerns when I get back, but for now, I’m afraid I need you to sign this form!”

Miss Katchatorian sighs.

“Hold on, dearie, hold on.” She throws her head back and shouts: “Henry! Henry come here!”

“Ma’am, I really don’t think-“

“What d’you want, Nonny?”

A balding middle aged dude stomps his way into Miss Katchatourian’s kitchen, scratching his ass in front of God and everybody. Her son? Nephew? Grandson? His stained, patchy shirt stretches over his chest, making his nips poke out so far they’re in danger of putting out someone’s eye. Gotta admit, I’m a little jealous that his tits are bigger than mine. He leans his rake against the door frame and stomps on over.

“Henry, I need you to read this over for me. I’ll not be bamboozled again.”

Sure, lady. If anyone’s gonna keep you from getting bamboozled, it’s gonna be a savvy, whip smart guy like Henry. He takes the paper from her and gives it the once over. I honestly didn’t expect him to know how to read. Good on ya, Henry.

“Now what does this mean? The ‘Junior Representative under limited and tenuous service’ bit?’

“It means that I’m only _in training_ under the Cobalt Soul, so I’m not allowed to do official things like funeral rites, blessings, or non-Cobalt Soul related criminal interrogations!”

“And ’the recipient hereby acknowledges fulfilment on part of the Cobalt Soul via courier’? I won’t have you ignorin’ us if you’ve gone and mucked somethin’ up.”

“Sir, I promise there is no legally binding agreement being made here! Only the peace of mind that your granny got her things! You still retain the right to a refund and to a line of contact with the Cobalt Soul if you later find that the service was not to your liking!”

“The Katchatourians don’t sign nothing until we understand the full scope a’ liability and any possible legal rights bein’ withheld!”

OH MY GOD. “Sir, the best I can do is open a line of conversation between you and my supervisors at the Cobalt Soul. For now I really need you to sign this!”

“All I’ve heard from you is ‘Sign this, sign this, sign this!’ How should I know you ain’t gonna use my Nonny’s signature against her wishes!”

Even Tracy is bending against the onslaught. “Sir, I’ve explained to your Nonny that we don’t hold on to the form; it’s destroyed immediately after my supervisor che—

“Well, what’s the point then?! That’s wasteful, that is! Paper and ink are expensive and here the Cobalt Soul are wasting my tax dollars—“

Something in me snaps and Tracy explodes in a shower of glitter.

“Just sign the fucking form!”

For a second, they both just stand there, mouths hanging open stupidly. I try to backpedal, but there’s no coming back from this. Just as Henry gets his shit close enough together to be offended, Miss Katchatourian’s whole body jerks. Her bony, knobbly hand digs into the front of his shirt. Her mouth gapes open. Her breath comes in tiny puffs like a dying fish. In slow motion she clutches her chest and collapses to the floor.

Goddammit, Henry.

…

“Beauregard, this is unacceptable!”

The top of Amat’s head barely comes up to my chin, yet she’s really good at talking down to me. I take a step back and feel her fist whoosh past my jaw.

“How was I supposed to know she had a bad heart!?”

She’s so short I could leapfrog right over her stupid fucking head, but I know she’ll go for the crotch. I just _know_ it. Instead I tense up and pull into a defensive stance.

“She is an old woman! They are _fragile_!”

I roll my eyes. They aren’t always fragile. My grandma was up drinking, smoking, and chasing tail until the day she kicked the bucket. The drinking, smoking, and tail chasing were what killed her, but, y’know.

“I wish you guys would stop sending me on grocery runs for backwoods goat fuckers.” I swing at her and miss.

She jabs her fingers into the side of my ribs and the left side of my body locks up.

“Community outreach is an honest line of work and you should be grateful we’ve gone to such lengths to find a job that accommodates you!” There she goes with that high and mighty shit again. Like they did me such a fucking favor by bringing me here.

“I’m worth more than this and you know it. Dairon knew it!”

The ground dips under my feet like it’s trying to get away from me. I lurch towards her and she chops down on my right shoulder. Everything locks, my skin twitching over frozen muscles. The dirt tastes metallic in my mouth when I hit the ground. The air is made of shattered glass and it rips my lungs to a bloody pulp every time I force a breath. My ears ring, my nose bleeds, my eyeballs feel like they’re fucking melting.

Amat towers over me. “Is that what this is about? Acting out because Dairon isn’t here? You are absolutely childish!”

My hands start to shake. My brain turns to water. All the shitty, awful things I could say claw their way up my throat and it’s like eating hot sand trying to force them back down. I clench and unclench my fists. Breathe evenly. Just like Dairon taught me. “Jumping to conclusions clouds your judgment,” I croak. “You taught me that.”

“I’ll be speaking with the Head Master about this,” she calls over her shoulder. I don’t have to see her face to know the look in her eyes—smooth, calculated blankness hiding contempt, disappointment.

“Throwing all those forms away is a fucking waste!”

The door slams shut behind her, cutting me off.

Fuck Amat. Fuck the Cobalt Soul. And fuck Miss Katchatourian.

**…**

The dormitories of the Cobalt Soul are kind of like a beehive—made up of little rooms crammed tight together, the inhabitants live on top of each other, and there’s always some bitch throwing out orders. I limp through the corridor and ease myself into bed, but the shitty pancake mat they give us to sleep on doesn’t do me any favors. My shoulder aches against the hardwood underneath me. Any movement makes the strands of muscles that run along my ribs clench and spasm until it lifts me off the mat, a hiss slipping between my teeth in spite of me. This one’s gonna bruise like hell. As I lay there breathing it out I hear other trainees wandering by in twos and threes, whispering and laughing together like assholes. I wish they’d buzz off. Get it? Bee pun? Okay…

A physical reprimand like the situation with Amat is standard procedure and it sure as hell isn’t the first time it’s happened to me. I got the shit kicked out of me my first week after getting blood on some “priceless” manuscripts or something. You ever heard of the Knife Game? It’s the kind of game you play when you have to sit for literal hours and watch some asshole read old books. There was also the time I got caught making “finger sandwiches” with a girl in the kitchens. I don’t even think they were mad about us fucking on the clock, I think it was more a sanitation thing. Got my ass kicked for that too. One time I planted a flowerbed in the shape of a dick. Dairon just rolled her eyes and told me to grow up.

No, it’s a formal meeting with the Head Masters that you have to worry about. You have to go and have “a talk about your future with the Cobalt Soul,” which really means they stand there making you grovel and beg to stay and even then they just kick you out sometimes. As much as being stuck here sucks, I don’t know where I would go if they kicked me out. None of my shitty friends in Kamordah would have me and I’d rather off myself than have to show up at my parents’ place begging to stay. I shift my fingers and wince as they brush against something tucked into the sash around my waist—my flask. Companion, confidant, and an unwitting parting gift from my father. Even the flask’s smooth surface feels sandpapery under the tips of my fingers and trying to pull out the cork stirs up this low buzzing feeling that travels all the way up to my jaw, like an angry beehive is swarming under my gums. But it burns going down the same as it always does and after a few slugs the creeping numbness dulls some of the weird muscle shocks.

It’s whatever. All of this is a problem for that bitch, Tomorrow-Beau.

**…**

Ohhhh God, it all hurts. Have you ever laid on your arm weird and then woke up in the middle of the night and it felt like you’d been fisting a Gelatinous Cube? Imagine your entire body doing that. All you can do is lay there twitching while the sun pisses right into your eyes. Goddamn monk-ass nerve pinch bullshit; I don’t even know if I can make it to breakfast.

As I’m just starting to peel myself up off the floor, someone starts banging on the door. I yell for them to fuck off, but they do the opposite and lo and behold, it’s Madir, standing in my doorway, tall, pretty, and pissed. Madir’s real nice to look at, but she takes herself way too goddamn seriously. I hop onto the tips of my toes, wobble for a second, and then rise.

“I was asked to pass this on to you, Mistress only knows why.” In those long, delicate fingers of hers she holds out a note on rough, handmade paper. The grain scratches against the calluses on my hands as I read it. It makes my fingers feel fuzzy.

When I look up, her eyes dart away. She shakes her robes out and then wraps them more closely around herself. “I really must get to work… But it’s not bad news, I hope?”

“Nope. Byyyyeeee.” I stuff the note in my shirt and shut the door in her face.

I can’t believe it. Another assignment. Business as usual—even after all the fucking up I’ve done. Are they fucking with me? Is this some dangle-on-the-hook bullshit?

**…**

Even with a bunch of stretching and another slug from my flask, I’m so stiff I have to use my staff as a walking stick. All around me little birds are chirping, little creatures are scampering, and somewhere beyond the tree line a babbling brook is running its goddamn mouth. The fairytale princess background noise makes the looming, creeping shadows all the creepier. They bend and slink around every tree like bandits or goblins or bloodthirsty predators and it puts me on edge. Fucking nature, man!

This place reminds me of this story my mom told me as a kid; it’s one of the only stories I can remember her telling me actually. It was about this little girl who has to take stuff to her grandma’s place, but her grandma lives in the middle of the woods. Before her she leaves her mom warns her; she says ‘aaahhh the woods are frightening dark and deep and the shit that lives there will eat you’ and then sends the kid on her way. So the kid makes it through the woods fine, or so she thinks. Because the whole time she’s been walking she’s been stalked by this gigantic, and from what I assume, anthropomorphic wolf. The wolf runs ahead to Granny’s house and… he either eats Granny or locks her in the closet, I forget which. Anyway, with Granny out of the way, he steals her clothes and lays in her bed and pretends to be her. Then the little girl comes along and he either eats her or she chops his head off, I forget that part too.

If you ask me, it’s more about shitty parenting on the mom’s end than it is anything the little girl did. Granny’s gonna die if she doesn’t get this ASAP! Don’t you dare take the quickest route, but chop chop, kid! Also why didn’t the mom just take that shit herself? I mean, her mom was deathly ill, shouldn’t she want to check in? The story sucks.

I’m so caught up in trying to remember the story that I almost step on her. One hundred pounds of muscle and thick, shaggy black fur. Wolf eyes, wolf ears, wolf teeth. Rough bark scrapes at my back as I stumble away and the wolf starts like a human would, fur puffing on end. The eyes go wide and I get a better look at them: one is a bright blue, like the sky, but the other is a purple-y, violet kind of color. It’s like nothing I’ve never seen on anything, animal or person.

I shimmy around the tree and hunker down. Ha ha. Fun times. We both had a little scare, now go away. Go away… Go away… I peak around.

She’s (How do I know it’s a she?) struggling at something in the dirt, digging and gnawing and making these gurgling noises deep in her chest. Then I see it, biting into her ankle—an iron trap, the kind they use for rabbits or foxes. Blood oozes from a huge gash under the trap’s teeth and her jerking and struggling and trying to chew the trap apart only rips it open more. At this rate she’s going to amputate her own foot trying to get out of there.

Ah, fuck.

“Easy, big mama, easy.” I hold my hands up, open palms, fingers spread, so she can tell that I’m not trying to pull anything.

Her ears flatten against her head and she glowers.

“I want to help you out of there. No funny business.”

I hold up a biscuit, the only thing I had on me that would interest her. It was a part of my delivery (pastries and wine for the Head Master’s auntie or whatever) and I’m dimly aware that I’m fucking myself over, but who cares? If doing the right thing lands me a meeting with the Head Master, I’m better off just saying ‘fuck it’ and leaving on my own.

The she-wolf gives me the meanest side eye I’ve ever gotten and shuffles away.

“See? Mmm. It’s good,” I mumble around a mouthful. It is pretty good in all honesty—flakey, salty, buttery, with little flecks of cheese here and there. Dogs like cheese, right?

The rest of the biscuit plops pathetically at her feet. She stares me down for a minute, incredulous, and then leans in to give it an investigative sniff, never looking away. It passes muster. A cautious lick. She starts chowing down. With her attention somewhere else, I go to maneuver my staff, but the motion doesn’t get past her. She snarls and jerks away, the chain on the trap rattling as she pulls it taut, biscuit diplomacy forgotten.

“No, no, no. It’s okay, beautiful.” I’m moving slowly again, talking slowly, showing her my open palms. “It’s not for you, not like that.”

We stare each other down for a heartbeat and I shift down on one knee. I drop my eyes. A family of ants shuffles its way through the showdown, too busy looking for dinner to care about us big, hairy creatures.

“You can trust me, okay? I’m just the bitch who brings the biscuits.”

The sound of chowing resumes.

While she’s preoccupied, I shift closer until I can work the end of my staff into the trap. She tenses up, but lets it happen. The mechanism seems loose, like it wasn’t put together very well or it’s worn apart since then, and a little extra torque snaps it in half. Suddenly she’s gone, a black streak rocketing towards the tree line across the way. When she’s put a good hundred feet between us, she pauses and looks back at me. Her eyes burn out of the shadows like two stars under a new moon. It’s a very long time before I look away from that spot and even longer before I pack up my stuff and move on.

**…**

“Granny Calvina?”

A jolly old lady peeps out of the doorway, beaming, and replying sweetly that she is Granny Calvina and how can she help me?

Well, shit, here goes nothin’. I hold the package out to her. There’s no disguising the fact that it’s been opened; the careful, pretty wrap job is crumpled and redone in a single ugly knot and there are definitely some gaps in contents of the basket. Her smile fades into something small and pensive as she opens the basket. She glances between it and me and then nods knowingly.

“I’d imagine they don’t hardly feed you, you poor thing. Not like you’d be used to getting at home.”

Why isn’t she bitching me out or demanding to speak to my supervisor?

“Ma’am, I don’t—“

“Don’t worry, dearie. I understand. All that salt is bad for my grouchy old heart anyhow.” She reaches into the pocket of her apron and pulls out a few coins. “Thank you for coming all the way out here.”

“All part of the job, ma’am. I, uh…“ I hold the signature form out to her. She nods and pulls out the grease pencil tucked behind her ear.

“Have a good day now, dear.”

She smiles at me with more warmth than I’ve gotten in a long time and slips back into her cottage before I can tell her to have a good day too. I stand on Granny Calvina’s doorstep in a daze. All around me the leaves seem greener, the birdsong seems sweeter, and I swear to God I can smell fresh baked pie floating along the breeze.

Am I fucking dreaming?

**Author's Note:**

> Please Note! This is a work of fiction and the interactions between human and animal described herein are not to be used as reference in real life situations! Go to this link to find information on how to safely handle an encounter with a wolf in the wild: http://westernwildlife.org/gray-wolf-outreach-project/wolf-saftey/
> 
> The quote at the beginning is from Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."


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